The Smoking Gun of Young Earth Creation

It’s hard for me to be a Young Earth Creationist, given that we can see starlight millions of light-years away, but I like hearing their arguments. Many of them, at least at my church, do have science backgrounds so they do respect science.

One of them, an Electrical Engineer, said he became a Young Earth Creationist because the more he considered the evidence, he saw that that there are “many clocks” out there and they don’t all sync up.

You have to choose your clocks. I thought that was probably the most eloquent way to state their position.

I replied:

The clocks don’t neatly line up. Nevertheless, 99% of clocks still say the universe and earth are VERY old. One has to engage in wholesale denial, obfuscation, and omission of basic facts to believe YEC, if one is scientifically literate.

I’ll grant most people are not scientifically literate. They don’t know who to trust. That describes the majority of church people and pastors. So let’s give them some credit; it’s not their fault that they don’t know.

But the real smoking gun is this:

It’s the fact that ONLY highly conservative evangelical Christians and Muslims are YECs.

You will never find a Buddhist or Hindu or agnostic or Inca or atheist YEC. etc etc etc. Even Jewish YEC’s are rare.

Ever thought about that?

Similarly, you will be hard pressed to find anyone who drills for oil (remember, they only care about dinero and black gold, not ideology) who embraces YEC. They professionally know better.

Contrast this with Darwinism: You can find people of ALL races, religions and persuasions, including a whole bunch of atheists, who have serious bones to pick with standard textbook Darwinian evolution.

Why? Because it’s plagued with holes and unresolved problems. Nobody has ever seen any mechanical or technological device evolve the way Neo-Darwinians say life evolves… by random mutation and selection. Real-world evolution is a whole lot harder than that.

YEC is held in place by very particular assertions about original sin, death, salvation etc – doctrines which are faaar from central to the gospel. Evidence for an old earth gives us potent reasons to question these doctrines.

What I’m saying is that a great deal of conventional protestant theology is deeply flawed. The demonstrable age of the universe and resistance of YECs to change in the face of so much evidence is proof. A great deal of Christian theology has to be rebuilt from the ground up, because these assumptions run very deep – some as far back as Augustine.

This is a lot of work. Most Christians aren’t willing to undertake it. But facts are facts.